''American Sports Cavalcade'' was an American motorsports television show produced by Diamond P Sports in Hollywood, California that aired on

The Nashville Network The Nashville Network, usually referred to as TNN, was an American country music-oriented cable television network. Programming included music videos, taped concerts, movies, game shows, syndicated programs, and numerous talk shows. On Septembe ...

(TNN) from 1983 to 1995. ''American Sports Cavalcade'' was a winner of the cable television

ACE Award The CableACE Award (earlier known as the ACE Awards; ACE was an acronym for "Award for Cable Excellence") is a defunct award that was given by what was then the National Cable Television Association from 1978 to 1997 to honor excellence in Ame ...

for their motorsports coverage.

Format

The first contracted season of the show produced 26 installments (episodes). At the opening of each episode, a narrator would say, "Diamond P Sports presents... the ''American Sports Cavalcade''. A panorama of speed, color, drama, and excitement!" Over the years, ''American Sports Cavalcade'' televised such sports as

NASCAR The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and hi ...

and

ASA ASA as an abbreviation or initialism may refer to: Biology and medicine * Accessible surface area of a biomolecule, accessible to a solvent * Acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin * Advanced surface ablation, refractive eye surgery * Anterior spinal ar ...

stock car racing,

NHRA The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is a drag racing governing body, which sets rules in drag racing and hosts events all over the United States and Canada. With over 40,000 drivers in its rosters, the NHRA claims to be the largest motorsp ...

drag racing,

CART A cart or dray (Australia and New Zealand) is a vehicle designed for transport, using two wheels and normally pulled by one or a pair of draught animals. A handcart is pulled or pushed by one or more people. It is different from the flatbed tr ...

Indycar racing,

IMSA The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) is a North American sports car racing sanctioning body based in Daytona Beach, Florida under the jurisdiction of the ACCUS arm of the FIA. It was started by John Bishop, a former executive direc ...

and

SCCA The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) is a non-profit American automobile club and sanctioning body supporting road racing, rallying, and autocross in the United States. Formed in 1944, it runs many programs for both amateur and professional r ...

sports car racing, AMA supercross and superbike racing, USAC and

World of Outlaws The World of Outlaws (often abbreviated WoO) is an American motorsports sanctioning body. The body sanctions two major national touring series. It is best known for sanctioning the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series and the World of Outlaws Late ...

sprint car racing, monster truck racing and truck and tractor pulling from

TNT Motorsports TNT Motorsports was a popular promoter of monster truck races, tractor pulls, and occasionally mud racing in the 1980s. TNT was an acronym for “Trucks n Tractors” founded by the late Billy Joe Miles of Owensboro, Kentucky. Events were shown ...

APBA APBA (pronounced "APP-bah") is a game company founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was created in 1951 by trucking firm purchaser J. Richard Seitz (1915-1992). The acronym stands for "American Professional Baseball Association", the name of a b ...

offshore power boat racing,

Swamp Buggy A swamp buggy, also known as a marsh buggy, is a motor vehicle used to traverse boggy swamp terrain. Swamp buggies may be purpose-built buggies or vehicles modified to traverse swamp terrain. Swamp buggies are capable of traveling through or over ...

racing from Naples, Florida, and even a couple of rodeo events during their first few seasons. This show usually aired during racing season on Saturdays and once or twice on Sundays, with the same episode airing each time during that weekend. The episodes were almost always taped, edited, and broadcast a week or two after the event had taken place (known in broadcasting as tape delay). The episodes were usually 90 minutes in length. In the mid-1980s, Diamond P and TNN were the first group to televise racing from Road America in Elkhart Lake,

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

Personnel

The show was originally hosted by singer-songwriter and actor

Ed Bruce William Edwin Bruce Jr. (December 29, 1939 – January 8, 2021) was an American country music songwriter, singer, and actor. He was known for writing the 1975 song "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" and recording the 1982 co ...

, along with expert commentary by Steve Evans and

Brock Yates Brock Wendel Yates (October 21, 1933 – October 5, 2016) was an American print and TV journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was longtime executive editing, editor of ''Car and Driver'', an American automotive industry, automotive magazine. In ...

. Executive producer Harvey M. Palash and producer/director John B. Mullin oversaw the show. Bruce was himself a high school football and baseball player and for a time held a Sports Car Club of America competition racing license. Bruce eventually left ''Cavalcade'' to host a different TNN program called ''Truckin' USA''. Throughout the years, ''Cavalcade'' would employ other announcers as well, including

Paul Page Paul Page (born November 25, 1945) is an American motorsports broadcaster who is best known for serving as the play-by-play commentator for the Indianapolis 500 for a total of 27 years across radio and television. Page was the radio ''Voice of th ...

Gary Gerould Gary Gerould, nicknamed “The G-Man”, is an American sportscaster, best known as the radio voice of the NBA's Sacramento Kings since 1985. The Sacramento Kings renewed his radio broadcaster contract for 4 years on September 15, 2017. He is ...

Ralph Sheheen Ralph Sheheen (born August 23, 1964) is an American sports announcer. He is one of the lead broadcasters of NASCAR Xfinity Series on NBCSN, and was the lead commentator of Feld Entertainment's AMA Supercross Championship from 2006 until 2020. He ...

, and "Big Daddy"

Don Garlits Donald Glenn Garlits (born January 14, 1932, Tampa, Florida) is an American race car driver and automotive engineer. Considered the father of drag racing, he is known as "Big Daddy" to drag racing fans around the world. A pioneer in the field o ...

for NHRA telecasts. Production company Diamond P Sports and Opryland Productions (parent entity of TNN) had cooperated on numerous programs since 1975.

Highlight VHS

In 1989, Diamond P Sports and TNN collaborated and released a video entitled ''And They Walked Away''. This VHS video featured a compilation of footage from the first six years of ''American Sports Cavalcade'', and it featured a plethora of auto racing and motor sports accidents, crashes, and fires in which the driver(s) beat the odds to survive the incident. Fatal accidents, as the title alludes to, were not included in this production. Seven additional videos were later released in the series, the last three under the ''And They Walked Away Extreme'' banner, with last release in 1997, all of them featuring crash footages from TNN motorsports' coverage, accompanied with driver interviews on each accident.

References

{{NASCAR on television and radio 1983 American television series debuts 1995 American television series endings The Nashville Network original programming Motorsport in the United States American sports television series NASCAR on television